A variety of communication methods involving the use of computer networks have been developed in recent years in accordance with the growth of the Internet. Such methods include chat systems, multi-user and real-time communication methods. A chat messaging system is a means through which conversation, typically text-based, is sent from a sender to a recipient via a computer network, namely the Internet, almost instantly.
A client computer running a software application allowing one user to chat with another user on the same network can be termed a chat client. A chat room refers to the chat forum created by the users chatting via chat clients and matching servers (also referred to as chat servers). A chat user may chat using multiple chat services, which may be associated with the same or different chat servers.
Chat applications are often used by individuals conducting business. For instance, financial traders often use a number of different chat-related services such as Bloomberg Chat, Thomson Reuters Eikon, Communicator, Messenger and so on. By utilizing chat messaging, business users can view each other's availability and initiate a text conversation with colleagues or customers when a desired contact becomes available. Millions of users communicate using chat messaging systems every day. With chat messaging becoming an significant part of both personal and business communications, functionality and usability enhancements can be important to the continued success of this type of communication tool.
Chat messages received during a chat session are typically presented to a user in a window that may be referred to as a chat window. Users of chat clients often maintain multiple chat sessions simultaneously, each of which may be viewed in a different chat window. It is not unusual for users to have ten or more chat sessions ongoing at the same time. Financial traders in particular, may be monitoring and contributing to 20-30 ongoing chat sessions at any given time. Since each of these chat sessions may be presented in their own chat window, a large amount of screen space needs to be devoted to them. In fact, financial traders may often use between two and three displays to monitor all these chat sessions at the same time. In addition to the chat sessions they are actively monitoring, traders may have upwards of 3-8 different displays in use at any given time.